In my current game my automation researched fighters, etc. So I figure, let's have a carrier. Although none are available. So I decide to try and design one which I did, all the components were there, and the summary indicated I had all the material. But once it was built out the only message remaining in the warnings box was 'Cannot currently build ships of this type (Carrier)'. But I do not see anywhere that explains why not. Any ideas? Thanks

sgsmitty, I think you have to 1) research far enough along the 'fighter'/'bomber' tree to get to carrier and 2) your construction size must be large enough to build a carrier. There may be more involved that I am not aware of. My work-around was to add fighter bays to Capital & Cruisers.

As far as I understood, "carrier" is just a label from game prospective (if it fulfills the "40% of the size must be fighter bays" rule), but as Wild_Bill suggested, you can build any kind of ship with plenty of fighter basy, and they can ACT like a carrier. Yeah, I know that you can build bigger ships being carrier, but from functionality prospective there is no difference between a capital ship having fighter bays.

Otherwise, you have to research the "Tactial Interceptors" tech to enable carrier building. Interesting enoug, the description says "you can build carriers if construction size allows", but doesnt explain clearly what it means - I guess that means the "Large Scale construction" tech.

You need the correct tech that enables carriers and you need a large enough construction size to build it. The tech for carriers is along the fighter/bomber route in the weapons tree, the construction size is on the energy tree.

Carriers are not just a name, you are allowed to make them 40% bigger than the rules as long as that extra 40% is carrier bays, IIRC, I don't design ships manually so I'm not the best person to ask about that!

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Lately, I have had to manually design carriers from scratch, even after I have researched Advanced fighter bays, and can make a capital ship (size 650). It may be a glitch from the patch. After doing so, I still get the 40% carrier size bonus.

On ships which are near the size limit, be careful with auto upgrades - it might make the ship bigger, (for example phaser cannons from Maxos blasters) and unbuildable. Again, this can be manually fixed - set the filter to list buildable designs, and manually edit your ship to fit. Annoying, but not a huge problem.